Campaign Furniture - A New Book by Christopher Schwarz

Campaign furniture for people on the move sounds good. However, woodworking by people on the move seems problematic. The Kansas City Woodworkers Guild for example has 400 members and a 10,000 square-foot shop for a total cost including use of extensive tools of about $75 a year. This is great for people that don't have a shop, don't have a basement, or it's too hot or too cold to work in the garage. But if a person moves a lot he cannot expect to find a club like this into many other locations. What's the person that moves often to do?

I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately I'm afraid these words are primarily preaching to the choir. Like art, music, mechanics, metal work, home economics, and many other character building classes, wood shop has been commoditized out of school curriculums because it doesn't fit into the standardized testing mentality fostered by an obsession with market driven economics. Hand crafted and confidence in one's ability to be self sufficient are concepts that don't fit into the mass brainwashing of consumerism. Patience and the reward for hard work have been replaced with instant gratification and continuous electronic stimulation. Elected officials don't serve the common person anymore so as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and/or just plain old friends it is our duty to try and expose young people to the rewards and satisfaction that comes from making something that is both functional and beautiful yourself. Share the gift. It will make it that much more valuable.

Wow! First campaign furniture is interesting for historical reasons, second Chris writes and publishes books at the highest quality - if you just appreciate a high quality book (paper, ink, binding, cover) his books are a return to that high quality found mainly in high quality, and usually restricted access, reference and research libraries.

Last, regarding the William Johnston comment about the Kansas Cit Woodworkers Guild and their giant collective membership workshop, does anyone know if there is anything similar in the greater metro Boston area, on any scale, at any size?

If so, leave a comment here, also send me an email message though I don't know if this site will posting my email address - I'll try. :-) I build acoustic guitars of all sorts - steel string, classic, flamenco and others from across the Americas. I use basic hand tools for the most part but on occasion, especially for jig building, access to a real wooodworker's workshop of any size would be very useful since my workshop is mainly my kitchen. But when the tools are exclusively basic hand tools by necessity and mostly choice, though if and when I have even a small dedicated workshop space I will put in some basic machinery, things with motors. :-) smw_usa@hotmail.com

Hand tools don't take up near the room of stationary power tools, cost less and are quiet. Moving a lot and no access to an equipped shop are the reasons I got started w/ hand tools. That was 20 years ago and that's enough for me.
Cheers, Mike

I do not plan on moving any more. Yahoo. It is such a pain to move, but I am moving my new wife in. Newly wed at 66, not bad. I am not really interested in campaign furniture BUT I am interested in keeping lost art pub in business so I will buy a copy and more importably there may be a young guy interested in wood working that I get to help along that may be interested in building something out of Chris' book, so I will have to have it here. Schools do not teach it anymore,but young men and women want to learn how to work with their hands and I enjoy having company in the shop. I may get someone started that will turn into the next generations woodworking publications guru. I have switched over to using hand tools more and more. They are cleaner and quieter - not to mention usually faster with one offs.
Take care and seize the day.
Rick

Moveable yet beautiful furniture would probably appeal to many of us Generation Xers, as we tend to move every 5-7 years or so. Further, the overall simplicity of Campaign furniture design (dare I call it Modern?) is also a very appealing to those of us who, though we appreciate the work that goes into a Period piece, would prefer to live among furniture with cleaner lines. Bravo, Schwarz!

I hope to pick up this book and read it soon but I am too busy right now covering the fundamentals in the Anarchists tool chest and by Hand and Eye. I do not think that woodworking will die if people are willing to apprentice young men and women in to the field. I myself am only 26 and have taken the only apprenticeship I could afford through buying books and using the online learning environment especially the hand tool school. I live in a small town house but I have a folding workbench that goes in the back storage closet and hand tools that can easily be put away. I even have helped a younger guy at my church sharpen up a saw and he seemed excited to learn. We want to learn but often lack the resources to get started or even basic skills that were often passed down from parents/fathers. I hope this book will help people get interested in moveable furniture but, it gets to be more than that. Getting my generation to set down their video games w/ achievement points and learn how to actually do something that will actually last.

In your review you say:

"Woodworking as a hobby is dying. For all everyone wants people to learn to work wood, and all woodworking, in any form, is a very satisfying thing to do, fewer and fewer young people are interested in it." Perhaps the death of woodworking is greatly exaggerated. Particularly if you expand the definition of what you consider woodworking.

This runs through my head every time I haul a new load of wood into one of the two maker-spaces I frequent in the SF Bay Area, the Crucible and TechShop. Not only do I see people lined up at the planer and table saw most weekends, but I see even longer lines at the THREE ShopBot CNC machines and the laser cutter and engraver. This "Maker" movement is booming, and a lot of these people are making actual furniture out of actual wood. But sometimes this is "furniture making" like the current generation of woodworkers might not recognize as a valid expression of the craft.

Arts and Crafts arose as a movement partially as a reaction to mass industrialization, and sought to put the spotlight back on the craftsman rather than just the finished good. Then came the Reitveld, the Bauhaus, and other Modernist furniture styles that saw a chair and perceived a machine for sitting. Much of the CNC furniture I see coming out of Techshop has a similar point of view...flexible, utilitarian furniture for modern lifestyles...and you see it filling startups and lofts all over the city. But some of it manages to be more beautiful than utilitarian. Perhaps we are in a similar historical transition and we don't know it yet, where Krenov and Maloof are the current equivalent of Stickley and the Greene brothers.

I agree that campaign furniture is a great genre of furniture for the 21st century. I saw a modern interpretation of a steamer trunk by Method Studio's Callum Robinson in the March 2014 issue of the British mag Furniture and Cabinetmaking that blew my mind. Its as good of an example as I've seen thus far of someone using modern materials and construction techniques but remaining within the recognizable boundaries of the genre.

Ashley
@MdrnstWoodworkr